Jon Batiste Wrote Lullabies for Wife Suleika During Her Cancer Hospitalization That Inspired New Song (Exclusive)

The Grammy-winning jazz musician tells PEOPLE in this week's issue that his wife is "doing great" amid treatment

When Jon Batiste’s wife Suleika Jaouad was hospitalized amid her cancer treatment, and COVID kept him from keeping her company, he provided comfort in the best way he knew how: through music.

Day after day, the Grammy-winning jazz musician wrote Jaouad a new lullaby — an iteration of which, a song called “Butterfly,” appears on his new album, World Music Radio.

“It’s just such a personal narrative song in relation to my life and what my family has gone through and my wife and all of the things she’s been able to overcome,” Batiste, 36, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “That’s a really big part of the narrative of the song.”

Jaouad, a 35-year-old writer, was diagnosed in 2021 with a second bout of an aggressive form of leukemia. She and Batiste first met as teenagers at music camp, and after eight years together, they tied the knot in February 2022, just one day before she underwent a bone marrow transplant.

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She previously explained just how much Batiste’s lullabies meant to her in a 2022 interview with CBS Sunday Morning, where she said his songs made it feel like “he was right there sleeping by my bedside.”

Batiste says his wife is “doing great” amid her treatments, and was even recently able to go paragliding over the Swiss mountains.

“We were able to do things this year that last year were impossible,” he says. “She has a level of appreciation for life and being in the world that is profound. Everything is going as great as it can go, and we just pray that it continues.”

The Oscar-winning musician says that he and Jaouad have been able to face life’s difficulties by always seeking out the upside of every situation they’ve been handed. Though putting on a brave face hasn’t always been easy, Batiste emphasizes the importance of choosing happiness each and every time.

“We have a peace and joy that is definitely innate in our personalities, but everybody feels the full range of humanity,” he says. “I’m not saying that everything is positive, because it’s not. I’ve struggled with anxiety and had panic attacks. But having the discipline and having a person that brings out the best in you — if I didn’t have Suleika, I would be going crazy. You become one with this person who really helps to build the best version of yourself and vice versa.”

In addition to supporting Jaouad, it’s been a busy few years for Batiste, who stepped down as bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in August 2022 after seven years on the job.

In April 2021, he won the Academy Award for Best Score for Disney-Pixar’s Soul and took home five Grammy Awards in 2022, including the coveted album of the year prize for We Are.

After all was said and done, Batiste says he had downtime for the first time in recent memory — and used it to focus solely on his art, which was a new feeling.

“I’ve had so many different things on my plate,” he says. “There were a lot of great things that happened, between the musical discoveries and the career milestones, and then also a lot of heavy things happened. Positivity and joy doesn’t come to you. You have to go to it.”

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The result of his focus was his new record, World Music Radio, a concept album that finds Batiste adopting the role of an interstellar traveling griot named Billy Bob Bo Bob, who spends his days broadcasting a curated hour of music to earth.

The genre-defying record runs the gamut from reggae and disco to rock and soul, and features assists from artists like Lil Wayne, Lana Del Rey and Kenny G. Batiste says its arc “is from Saturday night to Sunday morning.”

“It was a very, very epic artistic accomplishment,” he says. “I don't think I’ve ever made anything that is literally designed to be listened to in every single scenario of life. You can listen to it with anybody in your life. It’s one of those kinds of things. So I think people should approach the album like it’s a friend, and find these different pockets for the music to just add to the frequency of your life, what it was designed to do.”

For more on Jon Batiste, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.

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